They work tirelessly all day under the harsh rays of a blazing sun, the stench of death and destruction around them. They are a team of Jewish heroes who are working around the clock with one mission: the recovery of human bodies.

The SA Friends of the Beit Halochem Zahal Disabled Veterans Organisation was established in Johannesburg in 1982, its primary goal being to help and support Zahal disabled veterans by raising funds to help them return and resume their normal lives as soon as possible.

There’s a popular weekly satirical show in Israel called Eretz Nehederet. In a recent episode, an actor playing Benny Gantz, the former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and newcomer to Israeli politics, is asked how he’s feeling.

Devotion to the cause of the State of Israel flourishes in the most unlikely places, even in societies where the Jewish presence is small to non-existent. Such is the case in Mozambique, where the work of Beth-El Associacao Crista Amigos De Israel - Mozambican Christian Friends of Israel - testifies to how much can be achieved by those inspired by their Christian faith to promote the Israeli cause, despite adverse conditions.

JNF’s unique “Blue Boy Box” now lives at King David Linksfield Pre-Primary so that children of each generation learn the importance of tzedakah (charity or welfare). It is the responsibility of Jews all over the world to build Israel, develop it and nurture it as the home of the Jewish nation

“Knowledge is Light” was our school motto when I was a child in Durban. The importance of education was made clear to us from as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t taken for granted. A good education was a privilege.

(JTA) Norwegian rapper not charged with hate speech
A Norwegian rapper who cursed Jews while performing at an event in Oslo promoting multiculturalism will not be charged with hate speech, because his words may have been criticism of Israel, prosecutors said.

Did Israeli soldiers violate international law by deliberately targeting unarmed children, journalists, health workers, and people with disabilities during the past year of violence along the Israel-Gaza border?

(JTA) After the New England Patriots beat the favoured Kansas City Chiefs to reach their third straight Super Bowl – their amazing ninth in less than 20 years – CBS sports analyst Boomer Esiason made an intriguing statement, namely that Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

We are winging our way towards Human Rights Day (21 March), the first public holiday of the year, which coincides with Purim. I can’t help but wonder about our concept of human rights and what it means, not least of all, to our government.

President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed in parliament last week that South Africa intended to downgrade its diplomatic presence in Israel. The foreign affairs bureaucracy was working “feverishly” on the matter. “The decision to downgrade the embassy in Israel is informed precisely by the violation of the rights of Palestinians and we are therefore putting pressure on Israel. But at the same time, we are saying we are willing to play a role and ensure there is peace,” said Ramaphosa.

Undeterred, and in spite of the hate-filled disparagement that spewed forth when Shashi Naidoo uttered positive comments about Israel and Jews last year, Haafizah Bhamjee penned a reasoned and sensible article on Israel and the Palestinians in the SA Jewish Report of 22 February.

With Prince William’s historic visit to Israel this week, all eyes have been trained on the Jewish capital. It may have taken 70 years, but the first official visit by a member of the British Royal family began in Israel on Monday, when William, the Duke of Cambridge, arrived in Tel Aviv.

Some 5 600 emissaries (shluchim) from Chabad-Lubavitch from all over the world gathered at the Pier 8 warehouse in Brooklyn, New York this week for the opening of their four-day annual international conference and banquet, 75 years after the arrival of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, from Europe.

One of the questions that haunts the story of Purim and moves silently through the lines of the Megillah is clear and chillingly simple: How could Jews have chosen to remain in Persian Shushan? It was so clearly an environment in which anti-Semitism was so prevalent that a genocide could be planned and almost implemented without comment by broader society.

“The greatness of our nation is that our people are great. We are a nation of heroes, of people with good and decent moral fibre who will not tolerate our country being plundered!” So said Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein in Pretoria this morning.“This is a struggle for accountability and justice,” Goldstein told the crowd (which included prominent Jewish CEOs like Adrian Gore, Stephen Koseff and Michael Katz). “This struggle is about sovereignty. The power of the people always triumphs in the end.”

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Tough, teasing, enigmatic: Abramowitz’s debut novel is a stunner

FutureLife: A Protea is not an Artichoke is not a book about horticulture. It’s not a book about breakfast cereal. In some sense, it’s not even a book. It’s a work of paper-and-print performance art written by one of South Africa’s best new authors. It’s also, beguilingly, an autobiography of someone else – who, as it happens, doesn’t exist.

by
SIMON APFEL | Dec 13, 2018

Mariaan Abromowitz, the protagonist of Tanya Abramowitz’s daringly experimental debut novel, lives a charmed life. Born in the Karoo at the turn of the century to a family of sheep farmers, she quickly displays a precociousness that catapults her out of her small-town beginnings into the big time.

In this almost Gumpian tale, Abramowitz goes on to found a bottled-water empire, becomes an international vice-president at a global pharmaceutical company, and plays an instrumental behind-the-scenes role in the 1969 moon landing. And then, at some point in the story, with no prior warning, Abramowitz pulls the rug…

FutureLife begins as a fairly conventional coming-of-age tale, then morphs into something more opaque and altogether darker. A shocking development midway through calls into question everything that came before. Piece by piece, beat by beat, the story and the characters start slipping through the reader’s fingers, and the big, reassuring world that the author has so meticulously built begins caving in. At some point, with no attempt at an explanation, Baruch Spinoza enters the narrative.

This feeling of being left unmoored from previous certainties is more than unnerving, it’s almost stomach-turning. And then it becomes heart-rending.

Throw away details suddenly take on ominous new significance. The oddity of the protagonist’s very Afrikaans first name and very Jewish surname gently foreshadows the disarray down the line – and emerges as a comment, perhaps none too subtle, on the fractured nature of identity.

Ultimately, the title is a bitter irony – the fictional Abromowitz caught in a spiral of trauma that keeps her trapped in her past, unable to escape the platteland, chained to her damaged, unevolving self. Different planes of reality emerge, as FutureLife takes on a surprising, perhaps even shocking genre twist, delving into sci-fi, flirting with theoretical physics, the author showing off her virtuosity with forays into string theory and the multiverse.

Also interesting is the manner in which genuine autobiographical details are sprinkled throughout the book – her father’s long-running battle with addiction, the toxic relationship with her three older sisters, the crippling childhood knee injury she suffered on a jumping castle.

Little clues lining the path of the story seem to indicate that the protagonist is ostensibly the author’s own great grandmother. And indeed, as the story unravels, FutureLife blurs the lines between fiction and reality in intriguing ways. It emerges that there’s a real life Mariaan Abromowitz who grew up in the Klein Karoo but bred cattle not sheep, while the author’s actual grandmother was a sheep farmer, but from the south of England.

Throughout FutureLife, Abramowitz exhibits a formal daring, a playfulness with tropes and traditional storytelling techniques that verges on, but never wholly tips into, satire. Ultimately, she has too much affection for these characters to poke fun at them.

This more self-serious approach is particularly apparent in the way FutureLife tackles its Jewish themes. Jewish identity (the protagonist’s and the author’s) figures prominently. Scenes of the family around the Shabbos table are almost painterly in their composition, and achingly earnest. Though one could argue that the absence of irony from these scenes is, itself, ironic.

Not all of it works. Abramowitz overdoes the whimsy, and is prone to flights of fancy that soon wear out their welcome. And at some point, her high-wire act begins to draw attention to itself, leaving the reader alienated from her captivating story and richly drawn characters.

Even so, there’s so much to admire here, and it seems churlish to fault Abramowitz for her ambition.

It’s not just her book that’s enshrouded in mystique. In a recent interview with The Citizen, Abramowitz underlined her desire to keep a low profile and her distaste for social media. A Google search reveals very little, and the name Tanya Abramowitz is almost certainly a pseudonym. In short, she has good claim to be South Africa’s own Elena Ferrante.

And, what she’s done with her debut novel is kind of extraordinary. FutureLife is a crash course on Jewish philosophy, it’s a meditation on identity, it’s a time capsule of a time and place that doesn’t actually exist. It’s simultaneously a Borgesian labyrinth and a Danielle Steel romance.

And what of proteas and artichokes? You’d have to read the book for yourself to find out.

Visit https://tanyaabramowitz.wixsite.com/futurelife to pre-order the book or find out more about the author.

2 Comments

2
Tory Rain
23 Dec

Really excited to get hold of this! Looks like it may be set to become the great Jewish South African novel of our time, if the reviewer’s opinion is anything to go by.

1
F.Root Loeps
23 Jan

Thank you Jewish Report for such an incredible book review.
I highly commend the author and hopefully we'll read this book at our next book club meeting.
Simon Apfel is a true talent.